England and Pakistan will struggle to escape years of choleric rivalry

From Carr v Begh in 1956 to the 2010 spot-fixing scandal via Ian Botham's mother-in-law and Shakoor Rana, England and Pakistan have sorely tested administrators and the judiciary
•In pictures: a bitter cricketing history

Traditionally, the departure press conference for a Test tour presents the captain with an opportunity to set a conciliatory tone for the forthcoming series and Andrew Strauss, on the morning his side left Heathrow for the United Arab Emirates to play Pakistan, did not disappoint. "We all recognise it's time to move on," he said, referring to the ill will between the two sides generated by the corruption scandal of 2010, adding for emphasis: "The spot-fixing stuff is something we're desperately keen to move on from."

This talk of fresh starts and new slates is a motif of all pre-Pakistan series pronouncements, one that has sadly rung hollow over the past 58 years as another regrettable episode of this uncommonly controversial rivalry arises to undermine the best intentions of the protagonists.

The two sides have been playing each other since 1954 when Abdul Hafeez Kardar, who had played for India on the 1946 tour a year before partition, became the first captain to win a Test in a nation's debut series in England, tying the rubber 1-1 with victory at The Oval thanks to Fazal Mahmood's 12 for 99.

Two winters later the MCC sent an A side led by Donald Carr to tour Pakistan, which was then divided into East and West states. During the third unofficial Test at Peshawar, the tourists' discontent at the umpiring of Idris Begh, whom they perceived to be favouring the home side with his leg-before calls, erupted at the close of the third day's play when, according to contemporary Pakistan sources, he was "kidnapped" and subjected to the "humiliation" of being drenched in water at the team's hotel by Carr, Brian Close, Roy Swetman and Harold Stephenson.

The players, however, told a different story, at least initially, claiming that Begh was in on the prank, had taken it in good spirits and it had only been mischief-making by the local press that hyped it up into a diplomatic incident. In the aftermath the MCC offered to cancel the tour and Carr apologised to Begh. The tour manager, Geoffrey Howard, said: "I would be very surprised to hear Idris Begh deny that we parted good friends. It had no connection whatosever with umpiring decisions."

Twenty years later Close, in his autobiography, admitted that events had cleaved closer to the Pakistan version. "There had been a never-ending string of strange lbw decisions against us," he wrote. "Idris was brought to our hotel for a friendly drink and chat … and was gently sliding towards the door, when suddenly he made a bolt for it. The skipper it was who flattened Idris with a flying rugger tackle in the gardens and hauled him back to the hotel." When he was back inside Close and Swetman "up-ended our cauldrons".

For the next four decades umpires continued as the proxies through whom battle was waged and, although on subsequent tours the matting pitches that had so frustrated Carr's side had been replaced, most England players' memoirs do not hold back on their disgust at the rudimentary facilities they encountered. In 1968-69 and again in 1977-78 matches were interrupted by pro-democracy demonstrations and the riot police's brutal suppression of them.

When Pakistan came to England in 1978, Bob Willis felled the helmetless nightwatchman Iqbal Qasim with a fearsome bouncer at Edgbaston and caused such a stink that he was censured by Wisden and the Test and County Cricket Board, forerunner of the England and Wales Cricket Board, issued a statement "bitterly regretting" the incident.

Four years later Imran Khan's team felt aggrieved by a decision made at Headingley by the umpire David Constant to give Sikander Bakht out caught by Mike Gatting at bat-pad off Vic Marks when he had not even feathered the ball, a call that derailed their chances of posting a more formidable target in the decisive Test. When they returned in 1987 Pakistan had made it clear that they had no faith in Constant and demanded that he should not be picked for any of the Tests, but the TCCB ignored them, publicised their demand and appointed him to stand at Lord's and The Oval.

The following winter at Faisalabad the chickens came home to roost in the most notorious of all player v umpire conflicts when Shakoor Rana and Mike Gatting traded insults after Rana accused the England captain of cheating for signalling to a fielder, David Capel, not to walk in from his position so vigorously. Rana called Gatting "a fucking cheating cunt", bringing to a head the rancour that had existed from the first Test, when England had been dumbfounded by decisions given by Shakeel Khan and Chris Broad had had to be persuaded to abandon his one-man mutiny and eventually walk off when given out. A day's play was lost while Gatting was forced to write an understandably grudging note of apology to Rana but the tour ended with the players given a £1,000 bonus by the TCCB for the hardship they suffered, a gesture interpreted as an official raspberry disdainfully blown at Pakistani sentiment.

England did not return to play a Test in Pakistan until 2000, when the series was won in the gloom at Karachi despite the gamesmanship and slow-coach tactics of the home side's captain, Moin Khan.

Ian Botham was absent from the Gatting tour, having made his off-the-cuff Les Dawsonesque remark on his premature return from the 1983-84 visit that Pakistan was "the kind of place to send your mother-in-law to for a month, all expenses paid". When he was out for a duck in a bitterly contested World Cup final in 1992, caught at the wicket off a ball he maintains he did not touch, Aamer Sohail sent him on his way by asking: "Who's coming in next? Your mother-in-law?"

Further disputes followed when the then world champions toured England that same year, centred on the dominance of reverse swing and allegations that it was achieved by ball tampering. During a one-day international at Lord's the umpires, Ken Palmer and John Hampshire, ordered that the ball had to be changed mid-innings but the ball itself and the umpires' report were not made available for inspection by the public.

Imran Khan's admission that he had once used a bottle top to scuff the ball while playing for Sussex in 1981 ultimately ended in court in 1996 when Allan Lamb and Ian Botham brought libel proceedings against the former Pakistan captain for accusing them of being "racist, ill-educated and lacking in class". After a bitter the jury found for Imran and the entire case was labelled "a complete exercise in futility" by the judge; although an appeal was mooted, Lamb and Botham eventually dropped it on grounds of cost.

A decade on from that court case the ill feeling rose again, beginning with Steve Harmison's running out of Inzamam-ul-Haq at Faisalabad while the captain was taking evasive action and culminating with Shahid Afridi's soft-shoe shuffle on a good length while all but a vigilant cameraman were preoccupied with the explosion of a soft drinks canister. Months later, when Pakistan came to England, the tourists forfeited the fourth Test at The Oval by refusing to resume play in protest at the decision of the umpires, Darrell Hair and Billy Doctrove, to penalise them five runs for allegedly fiddling with the ball. The International Cricket Council subsequently acquitted Inzamam of ball-tampering but he was banned from four one-day internationals for bringing the game into disrepute for failing to take the field.

Finally, and one hopes that it is a conclusive episode in this long-running saga, the exposure by the News of the World's Fake Sheikh, Mazher Mahmood, of the willingness of the captain, Salman Butt, and the bowlers Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif to conspire in spot-fixing at the Lord's Test during Pakistan's tour of England in 2010 ended with the three players and their agent, Mazhar Majeed, serving prison sentences for corruption.

On the morning of the paper's publication England's players were understandably angered by the alleged criminality of members of the opposition, a situation made far worse days later when the bombastic chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, Ijaz Butt, launching a chaotic rearguard action, accused England of accepting money to throw a one-day international. Butt was forced to retract his allegations under the threat of legal action from the team he had slurred but the overwhelming impression remained that relations between the two sides, never placid, had fallen to a new nadir.

Now, only 16 months later, it is up to Strauss and Misbah-ul-Haq, the impressive "new broom" Pakistan captain, to consign a 58-year history of often choleric rivalry to the past. Umpires, administrators and the judiciary can contemplate more serene days ahead if they manage to succeed.